Sage Escape: Equinox #1

“A final conflict plays out between the Salesman Assassin Empire and the Human Resistance.”

Issue #1 of Sage Escape follows around Sage, a human teenager turned cybernetic super badass, as she awakens from a long sleep to find her enemy’s daughter now leading the Salesman Assassin Empire (used to be Friendly Corp). But can this new ally be trusted?

Writer and artist Damian S. Simankowicz presents Sage trying to cope with her new surroundings and, oh, also some awesome battle scenes as well as a man-baby in a suit that crawls and can scream loud enough to drive everyone mad. Sounds pretty fun right?

The artwork in this series differs from others you might have seen as it takes a more digital looking approach and plays around a lot with various patterns and textures, all coming together to create the large world Simankowicz has thought up. A great scene that showcases some of the changes made to Sage has her changing her program (which can be changed by replacing a disc in her head) she goes from her combat program to her empathy mind, which causes her to think about her prior actions for the first time. It’s a fun take on the concept of her cybernetics and allows Sage to become whomever she needs to in order to complete a mission — or so it seems.

A great artistic scene showcases that man-baby mentioned above. He screams and everyone tries to cover their ears, or just simply stop their heads from exploding. A blue mech unit raises his hands in the air as the man inside tries to brace the cries, and in the foreground a trooper tries to settle himself as the “EEEEIIIIIIIII” takes up the top of the page.

Simankowicz is creating a huge world in only a few issues and already from #1 there is drama and a past coming into the picture, what else is left for Sage… and whose side is she really on?